


what fine design

by electrumqueen



Category: Palace (Dessa Song)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-25
Updated: 2012-12-25
Packaged: 2017-11-22 08:42:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/607948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/electrumqueen/pseuds/electrumqueen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>you shouldn't open doors / you don't plan to walk through.</i>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The angel is moulting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	what fine design

**Author's Note:**

  * For [salifiable](https://archiveofourown.org/users/salifiable/gifts).



The angel is moulting.

  
Scott sips from his gin and tonic (heavy on the gin, light on the tonic; this is how you make the days go by) and watches the grey feathers drift down and down and down, all over the water-stained carpet with its bald patches where previous occupants stubbed out their cigarettes. 

Scott used to smoke, once upon a time.

Angels were beautiful, once upon a time.

“Are you okay?” he asks. He thinks he saw her with a pack, once. Virginia Slims. She pushed up the window with its red paint peeling off in strips, sticking to her long fingers, and leaned out, wings extended delicately for balance. Her hair fell through the window and she breathed in like she was being blessed.

It’s been a long time, since then.

Now her hair is stringy and greasy; her wings folded messily behind her. She blinks, slow, three times. He thinks maybe she’s given up on him.

“You’re not okay,” she says. “I- I’m symptomatic.” There are huge bags under her brown eyes. “There’s no point saying this, is there? You never listen to me anymore.”

He tips his head back against the fading couch. Everything smells like water damage, like sadness sour, running through the walls. 

“How long have we been here?” he asks, looking around the living room: four walls, two doors - bedroom, bathroom. One window, sunlight shining through dilute and flickering, across the grey-green carpet. The walls are grey. He thinks maybe once they were yellow.

The TV is broken. Sometimes they get a bit of _The Price is Right_ but mostly the crooked rabbit ears sit there to taunt them.

He sometimes misses the outdoors, misses the sunlight on his shoulders. That is a long time ago, now.

"That's not a productive question," she says. Her knees are tucked up under her chin. She is sitting on the old coffee table, which is propped up by the first volume of a _New Shorter Oxford Dictionary_ under the one bum leg. He supposes it is her hollow bird’s bones that keep her light. 

Everything is so terribly avian, here.

"Don't you ever want to leave?" His nails dig into the green fabric of the couch's arm. 

"I can't leave without you," she says. "You know that." Feathers drift, drift, drift.

She reaches around, pulls a stubborn one out. There's blood on the shaft. "Ouch."  


 

He doesn't really remember before. He thinks maybe he was happy but he's not sure.

He just remembers that the sunlight would get in his eyes, cause sunspots. He'd blink them away.  


 

"You're aging fast," she observes. 

He is leaning on the chipped bathroom sink, staring at his tired face in the rusting mirror. It is all lines, dark eyelashes and wrinkles he didn't use to have, mouth turned down at the corners and dark spots threatening to emerge on the thinning fabric of his flesh. "Thanks for letting me know." 

She dangles her feet in the bathtub. "It'll slow, you know. You just-"

"Have to do as I’m told?" He's raising an eyebrow. "No thank you."

  
Lately, he doesn't even know why he says it. He's forgotten all the reasons she would be a bad idea but they settle in his stomach heavy, immovable, like a gallstone. 

 

In the beginning she was a gleaming shining thing, all glorious fully-spread wings, all bright pinions and brilliant eyes. Her robe was pure white, stains don't dare getting close. She said, "Scott, come with me," and stretched out a hand.

He almost took it. He saw the door behind her, shimmering into existence; it was open and he saw the rolling hills all behind her, the sky perfect and blue, the sun everything he'd missed in all this immeasurable time.

His fingers brushed her palm and it hit him, like a punch to the gut, like a kick to the face: "I don't want to die," he realized, and stepped back, heels sinking into the carpet, soul sinking into the smell of the mildew.

"It's not like that," she murmured, "Scott--" Her hand hung there, between them. She had perfect fingernails.

"No," he said. "No, thank you." He shook his head and swallowed and sat back down on the couch. "Would you like a G&T?"

To her credit, "Just gin," she sighed, wings collapsing onto her back. "Thanks."

 

  
There is a tap at the bedroom window. The moon is up and Scott is lying on his stomach because what's the point in sleeping when all your days are the same? 

The angel is curled up in the chair by the bed. She sleeps more than he does, these days. He thinks maybe that is the only place she gets to talk to people she likes. 

He pulls himself to his feet, pads over to the window. Here the sill is painted yellow and it's sturdier, the paint; it doesn't come off onto the pads of his fingers, it just remains. 

The crow on the other side raps three times with its beak. Its eyes gleam shiny in the moonlight.

"Oh, hey," Scott says, pulling up the window. "It's you again."

"Just checking up on you," the crow says, hopping in. Its wings are, like the angel's, more and more ragged these days. "You sure you can't help me out? You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours - you know, that situation."

"Sorry, no," he says, stepping aside for the crow. "You can have some cat food though, if you want. There's that giant sack of it in the pantry."

Lately, it's getting easier and easier to say _no_. He wonders if it will reach a point when it is so easy he starts going in the opposite direction and it's easier to say yes: he wonders which one he'd say yes to first.

"Sure," says the crow. It tilts its head. "Thanks."  


 

The first time, the crow was sleek and perfectly groomed; like someone's pet raven, not something you'd find on the street. It spread its wings and hissed at the angel, who stalked out of the room, wordless.

He realized he had not seen her fly.

"Hi," it said. "Hello, I mean."

"Hi," Scott said, sipping from his gin and tonic - heavy on the tonic, those days. "What can I do for you?"

"There's a very simple way out," the crow said. "You just need to jump out of the window and I’ll catch you."

"What?" Scott blinked, "That seems a bit - unbelievable."

"Well," the crow said, preening itself on the coffee table. A stray feather was plucked and drifted, slow and black, to the carpet. "There's a catch."

Scott drank his g&t and contemplated how he might rig the rabbit ears to get PBS. There was a special on, advertised, that he'd been excited for.

"I just need the angel's wings. They'll grow back, you see. It's quite all right. And her heart. That won't."

"Um," Scott said, imagining blood all over his hands. The thought of it made him sick. "Sorry, but no."

The crow sighed, shrugged as much as a crow can. "Give it some time."

 

  
He’s been tempted. 

It seems like a good idea, sometimes, when you are picking at an endless can of tuna and you are watching static on the television and the water is only running brown and the angel is asleep on the couch.

She has such huge bags under her eyes, though. She always looks so sad.

 

  
The angel wakes up to stare at the crow, who is picking at a plate of cat food. “Hello,” she says.

“Moonlight’s mine,” it says, amicable. “Hello, you.”

“It’s dawn,” the angel observes.

Sunlight is indeed, filtering through the dirty window, landing yellow on Scott’s faded flowery bedspread. If he squints he can see the hints of purple, pink, on the horizon - but not a lot, only barely.

Suddenly more than anything he wants to see the sun rise.

He sits, cross-legged on the bed. “I’m sick of this,” he says. “I just wanna watch fucking _PBS_. Everything smells like cat pee here. There aren’t any fucking _cats._ ”

There is a great rustle of wings. 

“Which one of us will it be?” It’s the angel. She sounds tired, more than anything. Her eyes are almost grey.

Scott shrugs. “Neither,” he says, stretching up to his feet. The window is still open.

It is a moment’s work to crawl out, into the sunrise, into gravity’s waiting arms.  


 

He dreamed a lot: fever dreams, unremembered. They went like this:

He walked, alone, through a river, through a valley. The sun shone on his shoulders and he belonged somewhere else; he could feel it. 

_You made a deal,_ somebody whispered. _You made a bet and now you have to honour it._

Mortality pressed against his heart. He stepped forward, into mortal flesh, and shut the apartment door behind him.

“Scott,” said the angel.

“Scott,” said the crow.

 

  
“Oh,” Scott says, opening his eyes. The concrete is cold and hard against the lines of his shoulders. The sunlight is so bright he cannot see.

The angel whispers, “Scott.”

The crow sighs, “Scott.”

He can feel feathers pressed against his back, hard and spiky. He sits up, and cranes his neck around; black feathers on his right, white on his left. His back itches.

“Oh,” he says. 

The wings are his.


End file.
